


[Headcanon] They are the Hounds of Hell

by BdrixHaettC



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Torture, MCU AU, Medical Horror, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Brock Rumlow, of underaged character, powers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 17:18:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9082000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BdrixHaettC/pseuds/BdrixHaettC
Summary: Brock Rumlow is loyal to Hydra because once upon a time Hydra saved him and his 'siblings' from purgatory. To him they aren’t Villains, they are Heroes, and he owes them everything.Especially the Winter Soldier.This is his story...





	1. His Story...

**Author's Note:**

> This is the outline, the headcanon I built from an image in my head where the Winter Soldier is the unlikely hero that rescued Brock Rumlow as a kid. It was two days well spent, lol.

Premise: Brock Rumlow is loyal to Hydra because once upon a time Hydra saved him and his 'siblings' from purgatory. To him they aren’t Villains, they are Heroes, and he owes them everything.

Especially the Winter Soldier.

This is his story...

When Brock Rumlow was a small child, between the ages of 4 and 6 (the records that have survived are inconclusive and Brock doesn’t remember enough of the time Before to know for sure), he became the latest victim of a shadow government agency whose sole purpose was to turn American citizens into weapons of mass destruction; a different kind of super soldier whose powers were not based on physical prowess but by psychic abilities, capable of destroying any enemy without ever having to lay a hand on them. In their clandestine activities to pursue the creation of the ultimate weapon the members of this covert group had turned to kidnapping their own citizens for unethical human experimentations and the results of those experiments had shown that the best results were obtained when the subjects were young enough to have a malleable mind. If nothing else, they lasted longer, before their bodies gave out under the stress.

Brock was by far the youngest subject the program had ever had and proved to be the unexpected turning point they’d been looking for. This meant that Brock spent his formative years in a living hell where his spirit and mind were broken down into something the scientists thought they could control.

And at first, that was true. Both for him and the others.

The subjects would comply with the exercises, the experiments they were never told the purpose of, if it meant they were rewarded by being given medication to help relieve the perpetual headaches and nausea. 

But as their powers grew the boundaries they were made to cross kept getting pushed and eventually a line was crossed that should never have been touched in the first place.  
When you mess with the unexplainable, unexplainable things will happen. 

Psychic horrors previously confined to their subjects’ heads suddenly crossed over to the physical realm and the scientists that had spent years breaking down the psychic barriers in their subjects mind realised a child’s terror given form is not something you can control. The very tools they’d used to foster the skills they wanted were turned against them. 

In the end, the only thing they could do was seal their victims away while they retreated to the upper levels of the secret compound to try to figure out a way to destroy what they had created. A seemingly impossible task as the pitch darkness the subjects had been forced to live under became the place where they thrived. How can you kill something that is not limited to the flesh, that you can’t get to because the shadows are their dominion? Distance, and the light, became the scientists’ refuge. 

Ultimately time would have done the job because they were still physical beings regardless of what their minds had been turned into. They could still be made to starve. 

Except word came from TPTB that the subjects were to be kept alive...

They were told that their efforts should be focused on finding a way to bring the subjects back in line. The new developments were far to ripe with potential to let it be discarded because they lost control. 

They were told to find a way to gain them back that control.

Most of the scientist were conflicted. They’d seen up close and personal what they were dealing with and thought that the best thing they could do was to kill them all off before they themselves were killed. But orders are orders and luckily enough most of the maintenance had been automated years ago. The only thing they had to ensure was that the cells didn’t run out of water and that the MRE’s they were fed kept arriving. That was about the extent they were willing to go to keep them alive. If the subjects didn’t eat it wasn’t their fault. To go down there was a death sentence.

For Brock and his fellow captives the months that followed were some of the darkest times of their lives. Up until that point their world had been painful but predictable. The routines structured to the minute. Their lives revolved around the times they spent in their transparent cells, their only company their fellow subjects, people who’d become close through their shared experiences that they considered themselves family even if it’s been years since they’ve seen each other, and even longer since they’ve talked. (They’d initially learned to communicate through a language of their own design and once their powers grew to include a sort of telepathic empathy they never had to speak a word to communicate. This was one of the few closely guarded secrets they were able to keep.)

Their isolation was only broken by the times the Bad Doctors took them away for the “sessions” that brought on the nightmares that plagued them in the dark. For a long time, because they were kept ignorant to the purpose of the experiments they were subjected to, they didn’t know that what they heard and “saw” in the dark were real. Not until they started dying. 

When all activities suddenly stopped they realised to their horror that they were trapped with these monsters, that they had been abandoned. They still didn’t know they were the source of those ‘monsters’, at least for some of them. Not yet.

By the time Death came for their enemies above them they’d figured some of it out. 

When it moved downstairs to come for them they were ready to bite back. People were just monsters in human skin after all. Especially the ones in white coats. 

The only reason why the soldiers that swept through the compound as swiftly as if they were ghosts themselves weren’t ripped apart the moment they crossed the threshold on their level was because they were covered in the blood of their enemies. 

Even as these soldiers came for them, they lived.

How then did the Winter Soldier, and by extension Hydra, the Death that swept through the compound become the heroes in Brock Rumlow’s narrative?

The empathic feedback Brock and the others were picking up when they came to their floor was very confusing. It bought the soldiers a few minutes that changed everything. For the first time ever someone was feeling horror on their behalf. Even as they started killing their ‘siblings’ it was clear it was to end their suffering, that it was because they were beyond saving. 

That became evident the first time they let one of them live.

When the Winter Soldier first laid eyes on the boy that would become Brock Rumlow and used his shiny arm to break through the glass, not to put a bullet through his head but to sweep him up and out of the cell with more care than the boy had ever known, the Winter Soldier saved the lives of his entire squad.

Regardless of what their initial orders where it became a rescue mission. The Winter Soldier’s act of mercy triggered the others and as long as the victims could be led or carried out with basic medical care they were saved. If they required more than they could provide with what they had on hand they were mercy-killed. Of the 27 souls that had survived to that day only 7 were salvageable.

Blind due the years in perpetual darkness Brock was carried out in the arms of a soldier that nicked named him Bones, for that is all that he was at that point, being one of the few that had not eaten of the MRE’s for a while. He was given a blanket and his first taste of freedom came with the touch of grass underneath his feet, the cool moisture of the light rain that fell from the skies and the rumble that shook the ground as the compound they’d live in for so long was blown apart. 

Their rescue was only the beginning though. Mission Control might have been decidedly unhappy that survivors were brought back but once the act was done they chose to adapt. They knew more than what had been included in the mission debrief and with the added records the soldiers brought back they understood that killing them was no longer an option. Who knew what they might unleash if they did. The particulars meant that a genuine attempt at rehabilitation had to be made but because of the victim's history any such rehabilitation had to be done by the soldiers that had ‘rescued’ them. They trusted no one else. 

It took years to get them physically healthy and even longer before they could ‘pass’ the psych evaluations that would allow them to step foot outside without an escort. Even with all the help Hydra’s resources could give them some found “life” too hard and when they were offered the opportunity to go under cryogenic sleep they jumped on it. Hydra was truthful in their promise they would take care of them even when the knew the maintenance of the cryogenic chambers to be costly. Those in the know never forgot why the survivors are to be feared and the benefits of taking them off the board outweighed the financial burden of maintaining the pods. Death might still not be the end for them and while frozen they are truly neutralised. 

Besides, there are benefits to taking care of the ones that chose to sleep. It meant the ones that chose to be active saw Hydra as something to trust and depend on. Hydra might not be as morally righteous as they’d hoped but their violence was never turned on them and they had codes they lived by that the survivors could agree with. Anyone that sought to stomp out the evil that would seek to recreate what was done to them are good in their books and in fact they would very much like to join in the stomping. 

That is how Hydra gained the Hounds. They were a small team of three that were unstoppable in their destructive force. Any enemy of Hydra was an enemy of theirs as long as they believed their cause was just. And a cause the Winter Soldier served surely was just? The enemies Hydra pointed them towards often died in very bloody and horrific ways. It was a very clear message being sent to Hydra’s enemies. Beware, for there is no escape from the Hounds.

As Assets they are invaluable, and they served diligently, even when they learned the truth about the Winter Soldier. As long as the Winter Soldier was loyal so was Brock “Bones” Rumlow, and as long as Brock Rumlow was loyal so where the others survivors for Bones had become their undisputed leader.

Even as injury took them of the field they found ways to serve. By design, when Brock Rumlow was left as the only active operative because the other two were permanently injured to such a degree Hydra had no other choice than to retire the Hounds permanently, the other two got themselves on the Winter Soldier maintenance team. There they found ways to fade into the background while they watched, and waited...

Brock Rumlow on the other hand made the transition to regular service surprisingly well. Going from working exclusively with his fellow Hounds Hydra found that he integrated well to their Strike Team. The fact that they were the team that most often worked with the Winter Soldier when he is out of cryo might have played a part in Mission Control’s decision to place Rumlow on the team in the first place. An incentive for further good service.

With time he gained the reputation as a fearless Hydra operative that always got the job done. But God forgive you if you messed with the Winter Soldier because Rumlow for sure never would, and once you got on his shit list you were better off dead.

Pierce knew when the Winter Soldier was lost to them because in the reflection of the glass that surrounded him in the office where the showdown with the Black Widow was taking place he saw the spectre he’d always feared would come for him the day he lost control of the Asset. The image had aged from the pictures they’d taken when the subjects had been “rescued”, as had the original subject, but there was no mistaking who it was. Bones had always been an apt name.

His final thoughts as he was shot was relief and gratitude toward the Black Widow for the fate she had just spared him from. 

(To Be Continued in Chapter Two with added background world building.)


	2. Additional background world building

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how Hydra could ever be anyone's heroes. 

Here, have some background world building that answers why Hydra could ever be anyone's heroes. 

Hydra has their fingers in a lot of pies and there is very little they won’t do as evidenced by the creation of the Winter Soldier. But modern Hydra is the brainchild of Dr Arnim Zola and because of that their approach to world domination is primarily based on pragmatism, and science. Both the hard and soft sciences have played their part in making Hydra what they are today. 

The Red Skull, aka Johann Schmidt’s, legacy has ironically become about what not to do. His obsession with the dark arts taught Hydra an invaluable lesson; dabbling in the mystic might grant great power but the benefits are greatly offset by the lack of control. Inevitably the unknown will turn around and bite you in the ass, hard. If you are lucky you, and the world, will survive to fight another day. But if you want world domination you have to have a world to dominate, so Hydra are in the weird position that they frown on any activity that might invite the end of the world that is not of their design. Because of this stance they will at times interfere when they learn of secret government projects that crosses the line into the Unacceptable.

After WWII both sides dabbled in the weird in an attempt to create a viable Super Soldier. As fates would have it most attempts failed. But as the conflicts between the West and the Soviet Union escalated so did the paranoia on both sides regarding the weapons the other side had. 

When the Winter Soldier arrived on the scene, with his near preternatural abilities in getting the kill, the West took that as confirmation that the rumours of a secret psychic weapons program the Russian’s had were true. Now, most of the Allied nations realised the futility of pursuing such fields, primarily because few had the resources to even get in the game. The US had no such qualms. They had the resources, and more importantly the will, to make sure they had weapons of their own to face anything the Red nation could throw at them. The atomic bomb certainly showed they lacked the human empathy to consider why it would be a bad idea.

The 60’s was dedicated to the research and development of naturally occurring psychic powers, the popularity of the field meant they didn’t lack volunteers. When the program fell out of favour with Congress in the 70’s due to an apparent lack of progress, it went off the books and the subjects weren’t so much volunteers anymore as they were undesirable from the street that no one would miss.

If the status quo had remain what it was; with no discernible progress made by the scientists’, the program would have dissolved naturally. But that was not the case. Years of unethical experiments meant they were able to decipher the cause of psychic abilities, why some had them (labeled as gifted) and why others didn’t (labeled as nulls). They figured out how they could increase the power in the gifted but also how to break the threshold so that even the nulls could develop psychic abilities. It is when they learn to break the threshold that they stumbled upon the mystic secrets that promised infinite power to those that could harness them. The 80’s saw the Soviet Union crumble but the US did not lack enemies to choose from and so they became obsessed with learning how to harness the power they’d discovered, to weaponise it so that no one would ever think them an easy target.

The increased government scrutiny meant that the program eventually set up shop outside the US borders, a black op buried in the more legitimately operations the government ran. It gave the people involved a plausible deniability but the clandestine operation still got their main funding from the DOD. 

Beside the clusterfuck messing with the Other is bound to cause, the ethical dilemma came from the subjects the program started using. They had already been kidnapping people off the streets for years, but they’d learn that the likelihood of the nulls surviving the breaking of the psychic threshold, the so called third eye, increased the younger the subject were. 

While the program was dedicated to enhancing psychic abilities Hydra didn’t much care. They had their own department doing the same thing. As did most other governments. It is when they brake the threshold and don’t stop that they start paying attention. Silent Hill is a thing here. The ‘incidents’ in that town caused by the torture and trauma of a naturally gifted psychic girl are unfortunate but a ‘natural’ phenomenon; by its very nature it is restricted to the Silent Hill area. What those scientists are creating is not and because of that it has none of the limitations that comes with messing with the laws of nature.

When Hydra finally decides to act it is because the secret facility they have had under surveillance for a while has gone dark, and their undercover operative has disappeared. It is 1986.

The Winter Soldier and a couple of tactical teams are dispatched to clean house. The instructions are to kill the scientists, and destroy the research. All of it.

The brief is short but informative. The plan laid out and effectively executed until they come face to face with the research they have come to destroy. After that it’s a huge clusterfuck of epic proportions, primarily caused by a choice the Winter Soldier makes for the first time. 

Everything was going according to plan at first. They ghost through the facility and kill anyone they come across before the alarm is inevitably raised. It is not a difficult job to dispatch the security in place and round up the survivors. It is a few minutes work to interrogate one of the scientist for the others to give them the info they want. As they had suspected there is a whole sub-level that are not on the plans and that's where the main labs are, though they were supposedly sealed shut the moment the alarm was triggered. 

While half the team remain with the scientists to copy the info they have stored on their off-grid servers (the research is to be destroyed, but that does not mean Hydra doesn’t want a copy of the records), the other half work to get to the sub-levels. It takes some effort but eventually they make their way down, placing explosives as they go. 

The labs are eerie, empty and dark. The silence of the equipment and the thin layer of dust coating everything make it obvious it wasn’t the alarm that shut the area down. It’s been sealed for a while.

Someone on the tech support is able to bring power back online and using one of the terminals is able to bring up the layout of the sub-levels. That is how they discover there are three more levels going down underneath their feet than what they were told by the scientists. 

Once they find the elevators they discover they have been disabled and they have to cut a hole in the elevator floor and use the shaft to go anywhere. The only point of light is their own equipment and once they get to the lower floors they find it is by design. There are no light fixtures here. 

Whatever was kept down here was kept in the dark. 

It doesn’t take them long to find the first subject and to decide to put a bullet in their head. The poor soul was cut open, part of his insides and brain exposed, but still clearly alive. The other rooms on that first level under the main labs revealed more of the same. It is when the scout team lead by the Winter Soldier reaches the next level that shit hits the fan because the Winter Soldier has found the first victim that is still intact and instead of putting a bullet in their head has chosen to break them out of their cell. And there are others like him...

It is easy to dissociate when you are dealing with victims that are practically the living dead, when they have no way of surviving if disconnected from their life support, it is something else entirely when the victims wear the face of a boy that can still beg for help.


End file.
